Modular. One of the sexiest words to come out of tech. The idea that you can swap out any old part on your smartphone for new one, but keep everything else exactly the same, is almost too alluring. Too bad it keeps getting delayed.

Well, thank goodness for crowd-funding because now we have the next best thing: Modular smartphone cases.

China certification agency has just passed the little brother to the existing OnePlus 2. While it may be “smaller”, this little device’s spec sheet is going to surprise you. Subsequently, this may not even be the highest specification for the One Plus 2 Mini, as the Shenzen-based company has always listed the last number to correspond to a higher specification. For example E1003 would be better than E1000, that’s if a E1003 were to exist.

Of late, there’s been much buzz about what Cupertino’s engineers have been working on. From OLED displays to a remake of the iPhone 5c, we’re still left guessing as to what Apple’s new standout feature will be for the 2016.

Uber, the popular on-demand transport service has completed 1,000,000,000 rides since its founding over 5 years ago. Using a mobile app, Uber lets you request for a clean and reliable ride, which is like a breath of fresh air in cities with failed taxi services.

If you’re frustrated with how expensive your data plan is, or if you feel cheated by some mobile operators who claim to give you more Internet but limits usage to certain times of the day, we understand your pain. If you’ve been envying our neighbours in Indonesia, who are paying nearly half of what we pay for 1GB of data, we feel you too.

But, if you’re thinking of creating a blog to hate on our mobile carriers, citing examples of how much cheaper data is in our neighbouring countries, you might want to reconsider. This is because based on data collected by website Tech In Asia, we actually have more affordable data — on average, per 1GB — than most countries in Southeast Asia.

New leaks suggest that LG might borrow some cues from the V series and plaster them on their next flagship smartphone, the LG G5. It’ll be the Korean maker’s first ever all-metal smartphone too, according to a source involved in the organisation.

Love taking selfies with your iPhone? You might want to try this latest app from Microsoft. Yup, the company that brought you productivity apps such as Microsoft Office, OneDrive and OneNote is doing selfies and it’s called simply as the Microsoft Selfie.

With more selfies taken each day, Apple is still reluctant of putting any form of selfie beautification features into its camera ap. Most smartphone these days, especially from China are equipped with selfie enhancing features that automatically smoothes your skin with some fine touches to your eyes. This trend has also caught on with mainstream brands including Samsung, Lenovo and even Sony.

Virtual Reality (VR) has made significant advancements in 2015 and looks to continue that trend in the years to come. It even helped save a life. The problem is that unless you’re OK with Google Cardboard or other cardboard-like VR goggles, a standalone mobile phone VR headset — like the Samsung Gear VR — is quite pricey.

Thankfully we can always count on China to produce more affordable options and with FiresVR, proper smartphone VR gear could become easily accessible to everyone.

They say a king is nothing without his people. A tree, nothing, without its roots. A product, nothing, without its consumers. So what happens when a smartphone manufacturer gets slapped with a class action lawsuit filed by the very people who used to preach their excellence?

This time next week at CES 2016, the Korean tech giant will be letting loose some projects that were cooked up by their company’s engineers. These projects are basically pet projects that their best and brightest decided to take up when given some project-specific time off.

Samsung has released some small tidbits on what we’re to expect and so far they include:

A “smart” beltAn advanced hand-motion controller for VR gamesA “smart” UX system that allows you to take calls with the tip of your finger